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Author Topic: Vampire/were-beast behaviour  (Read 1273 times)

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Vampire/were-beast behaviour
« on: June 08, 2015, 08:58:24 am »

Vampires and were-beasts are intelligent, they can form relationships (except sexual). Cursed person must be aware of his condition so they don't hurt their friends. Were-cursed dwarf should hide somewhere away from the others before the full moon rises, vampire dwarf shouldn't feed on his best friend.
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Pwned dwarf

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Re: Vampire/were-beast behaviour
« Reply #1 on: June 09, 2015, 12:24:10 am »

agreed
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Vampire/were-beast behaviour
« Reply #2 on: June 09, 2015, 09:32:21 am »

While a vampire being more choosy about who they target is fine, keep in mind that night creatures exist for a game-purpose in a way few other things serve so directly a game purpose: They exist to be unpredictable and difficult to handle by simply walling parts of your fort off.

Making werecreatures choose not to hurt your other dwarves takes away the whole point of them existing.  Making vampires no longer a threat to your fortress, as previous suggestions have tried to say means they lose their only reason to be in the game. 
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Salmeuk

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Re: Vampire/were-beast behaviour
« Reply #3 on: June 09, 2015, 09:00:51 pm »

While a vampire being more choosy about who they target is fine, keep in mind that night creatures exist for a game-purpose in a way few other things serve so directly a game purpose: They exist to be unpredictable and difficult to handle by simply walling parts of your fort off.

Making werecreatures choose not to hurt your other dwarves takes away the whole point of them existing.  Making vampires no longer a threat to your fortress, as previous suggestions have tried to say means they lose their only reason to be in the game.

The OP was actually saying that werecreatures and vampires wouldn't choose to target friends and family. Like imagine if you or me were to become a vampire or a werebeast. Being a vampire means you can still choose who to eat and unless you were a psychopath who saw friends as easy targets, your conscious desire to feed on blood would be moderated by your unwillingness to hurt your friends. You might find vampires targeting their grudges, or just selecting from the numerous passing acquaintances they've picked up, while avoided feeding from closer dwarves. If there aren't any strangers available, however, you would expect the hunger to drive them crazy and force them to feed. Or perhaps certain personality traits would dictate their actions when extremely hungry. Maybe even a selfless trait - should only friends and family be available to eat, then the vampire commits suicide or banishes himself from the fortress since he just can't bring himself to kill someone he knows. If all vampires become psychopaths, completely devoid of feeling towards their old friends and family, then this would be less relevant. I actually think Toady has said something along those lines before but I can't be sure, so this suggestion still seems intriguing.

As for werecreatures, a common trope found in media containing were-beasts is the Human's (dwarf's) inability to reconcile his two halves, often driving themselves insane. If you knew that at a certain time and date you would transform into a raging beast, it would make sense (assuming you care about the people around you) to self-isolate. Chain yourself to the bed, lock yourself in a room and arrange for someone to let you out, etc. Again, certain personality traits could modulate the behavior of the individual werebeast, with some not feeling the need to self-isolate because they don't care about the impending violence. Also, a dwarf could easily want to remain a functioning member of society while still experiencing these transformations, and try to keep the transformation secret out of self-preservation (knowing cruel experiments and death await him should anyone find out). With werebeasts, it's relevant whether or not dwarves are able to remember their transformation after-the-fact, which is something Toady would have to weigh in on. A dwarf who was bitten by a werecreature might not know about his impending transformation, and in that case he wouldn't take any steps to self-isolate. Perhaps it could be a topic of research.

This is my interpretation of the admittedly terse OP, which wasn't suggesting the removal of all threat from these creatures, but instead saying that an individual creature's motivations should be factored into their patterns of violence. I'm all for subtle vampires and skittish were-camels.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Vampire/were-beast behaviour
« Reply #4 on: June 09, 2015, 09:23:21 pm »

Again, a vampire not targeting friends makes some sense.  That said, vampires in this game also happen to enjoy making trophies out of the skulls of the people they kill, so they may not be quite so "friendly neighborhood vampire" if you know what I mean.  Furthermore, friends are potentially a liability to someone who has to keep changing jobs every 5 years to keep up appearances, and who would most certainly notice you're not aging.  Friends will not be friends anymore when they find out you're a bloodsucking creature of the night, and unless the vampire can indoctrinate the whole relationship list in a blood cult, there's actually even more reason to dispose of "friends" quickly.

As for were-creatures, it's likely that they either don't know when they'll go off (how do you check the moon from 30 z-levels down?) or they're desperately hoping nobody noticed.  After all, most players don't know whether a dwarf is infected or not until the first change.  Beyond the first change, a scared dwarf may be more likely to just be trying to fit in (as with vampires) than thinking about the good of the fort. 

Beyond all that, again, these creatures serve more game purpose than necessarily strict lore purposes.  (They're more like placeholder creatures to represent what secrets can do in the future.)  Vampires exist to create paranoia, and werecritters are like jump-scares.  It's rare to even get a werecreature infection without going out of your way to trigger one, and if you have one, it can be assumed that the player's actions will sufficiently represent whatever isolation procedures are proper. 

Likewise, dwarves do lots of stupid, sui- or homicidal things just because of lack of fully-formed AI.  Dwarves only recently have started to recognize that fire hurts and is bad and water can stop that.  (Forbid-on-death code was added just to stop the lemming rush of dwarves wanting to carry back !!pig tail socks!! that previously could only be stopped by locking down every door between dead dwarves and living ones.) I don't think it was intended behavior in the long run for anything otherwise to be the case. 
« Last Edit: June 09, 2015, 09:25:26 pm by NW_Kohaku »
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
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Bumber

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Re: Vampire/were-beast behaviour
« Reply #5 on: June 09, 2015, 11:00:58 pm »

With werebeasts, it's relevant whether or not dwarves are able to remember their transformation after-the-fact, which is something Toady would have to weigh in on. A dwarf who was bitten by a werecreature might not know about his impending transformation, and in that case he wouldn't take any steps to self-isolate. Perhaps it could be a topic of research.
Dwarves are probably too drunk to notice or remember. Some party last night, huh?
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